


Your riches taught me poverty

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [35]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alistair is the sweetest lad, Diabetes, F/M, Feastday (Dragon Age), Gen, Kissing, Orlesian Kissing, Romance, Romantic Fluff, the best gift is one from the heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-08 02:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19862338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Feastday is right around the corner!  Alistair has no idea what to get the tiny love of his life.  Even worse she insists she doesn't want anything.  What's a man to do?!Kiss her.  A lot.Get your insulin shots ready folks, this is pure, unadulterated fluff.





	Your riches taught me poverty

“You know lad, it’s your people’s Feastday tomorrow.” Alistair nearly dropped the pike he’d picked up from Bodahn’s stores. The dwarf smiled guilelessly up at him, the picture of a politely helpful merchant.

“Um.” He really needed a better response than that. Bodahn’s eyes crinkled, and he glanced to where Caitwyn spoke encouragingly to Sandal. Even though all the boy said was  _ Enchantment _ , she patiently explained where she’d like the runes on her daggers. Not that she used them much, but she never could pass up anything remotely useful. 

“Maybe you’d like to buy something for a special someone? I have a fair few pretty baubles of the sort ladies tend to enjoy.” The offer was no sooner made then the merchant shoved a tray of jewelry under his nose and picked the pike away from his unresisting fingers. The tray was full of glittering things of gold and silver and precious gems. Bangles and necklaces and earrings and even a jeweled pin or two. They sparkled in the diffuse winter sunlight. 

Tentatively he nudged at a golden necklace, trying to picture Cait wearing it. Beyond the enchanted rings they found, he didn’t think he’d seen her wear so much as a ribbon in her hair, even when it had been long. The gold would look nice against her dark skin, he thought idly, the pendant sitting in the hollow of her throat and—no, no don’t go there. Earrings, then. Yes, those were nice, less forward. A pair of silver earrings glinted in the fading light, each studded with a small diamond. 

“Uh, can I?” he asked, voice rising as his uncertainty did likewise. Bodahn’s smile turned expansive.

“A good choice, my boy, go on take a closer look.”

He lifted the delicate loops of silver off of the crushed velvet—how did the dwarf keep velvet clean in these conditions? That had to be unnatural. The diamonds caught the light and fractured it prettily, or so he thought. But they weren’t quite right. Cait didn’t even have pierced ears. Or he didn’t think so. He tried to call up a picture of her ears, and resisted every urge he had to look at her right then, and promptly distracted himself with the image of how her ears tapered to a delicate point. How he very much wanted to run one finger along the line of them, not because they were pointed, but because they were part of her, and he  _ wanted _ — 

“Nugghgg.” Dropping the earrings as if they scalded his fingers, Alistair glared at the other shiny items held before him. Each and every one threatened to make him think of her. Think of her and how beautiful she was and all sorts of things he  _ shouldn’t _ think about her until… later. On her terms.

“Everything alright, lad? I know it can be a bit daunting, buying jewelry for a woman. Do you mind if I give you a bit of advice?” 

“Why not? Everyone else does.” There wasn’t a resigned tone to his voice. Nope, not in the slightest.

Bodahn’s grin turned almost fatherly. “Give her something that seems like it should already belong to her. The surest way to make sure she likes it.”

“Oh that’s… that’s good, but, Bodahn, I’m sorry, but,” he trailed off, gesturing lamely at the poffered jewels. 

“Nothing is quite right for her, is it?”

“Not really. Sorry.” 

“Oh, that’s quite alright. The point is that you  _ looked _ . But the advice holds true. Find something you think she’d own already, and you’re sure to do well.”

Alistair glanced at Cait, and as if she could sense his attention, she met his gaze and offered that quiet smile of hers. The smile that was his alone. Quickly, he clasped his hands behind his back and hoped she wouldn’t think anything of him browsing Bodahn’s wares. Her grin grew a touch wider. He didn’t think she was fooled.

* * *

Alistair was many things. Brave and gentle and honest and kind. But of the things he wasn’t, subtle was foremost. There was no mistaking the tray of jewelry that Bodahn carried around, nor Alistair’s intense interest in it. Nor was she mistaken in her count of days. Being underground for a month and a half had thrown her off, but the stop in Redcliffe had let her catch up. 

Feastday was tomorrow.

Idly, she twisted the gold ring on her thumb. A man’s ring, and too heavy for her to wear, it had served no purpose save a reminder of a home she had lost on Summerday. Nelaros’s ring. If her wedding hadn’t been interrupted, would she be there now preparing for the holiday with a flurry of activity? With a man who was six months dead and gone, but had seemed kind? Would she be mistress of her own clapboard house crowded with family for the feast, and for once enough food to go around?

She would not be plodding across the grey and snow-dusted fields of the bannorn, dodging Loghain’s patrols as they made for Denerim. Her life would not have been forever altered by the Joining, by surviving Ostagar, by all that she had seen and done since that day. She would have been a little wife in a little house with little worries. Small, safe worries.

It was easy to slip the ring off her thumb. The cold kept her fingers from swelling, even after a whole day of trudging through snow.

She did not miss the weight of it.

* * *

“We really need to get you better gloves,” Alistair remarked as he warmed her hands between his own. Their noonday stop had found her with her bow slung over her shoulder, hands shoved under her arms, and stomping around in the snow to stay warm as she had waited for them. She’d shivered the whole time they’d been eating, and it had taken only a moderate amount of wheedling to allow him to help get some life back into her hands.

“Oh, is that going to be my Feastday gift, then?” she asked archly. He froze as if the winter winds had turned him into a statute of ice. 

“Um.” Still a terrible response, that. His whole face suffused with warmth, and his ears stung against the damp chill of the day. Caitwyn’s shoulders slumped forward, and her dark brows arched up sympathetically.  
  
“You don’t have to get me a thing. I saw you yesterday looking at Bodahn’s wares, and I wanted you to know that I don’t need anything.”

“But what if you  _ wanted _ something?” He mumbled the question into his chest, but watched her from underneath his brows. Her breath puffed in a cloud around her face, and she shook her head, dislodging the hood of her cloak a touch.

“Nothing I want is in that tray.”

“Theeeeeen, it’s somewhere else?”

“You’re ridiculous. I hope you know that.” He sighed at her non-answer. Maker, why did she have to be so round-about sometimes?

“Very aware, yes,” he said dryly. The tone made blink her expression into blankness, and he nearly let his hands drop away from hers. But he kept rubbing her hands, and she didn’t pull away. He rounded his shoulders forward and stooped a little before speaking softly. “Cait, what if I want to get you something? I’ve never… I’ve never had anyone to give a Feastday gift  _ to _ before, and… and I think you deserve all sorts of gifts, and you don’t have to get me anything. You’ve already given me so much.”

Her gaze fixed on the center of his chest, but she wasn’t seeing him. She turned inward again, going inside her own head. Gently, he tugged on her hands and she slowly raised her eyes to meet his once more. 

How had he thought diamonds were good enough for her? Clear and shiny, but no substance, not like the gleam of her emerald-green eyes that held the weight of oceans.

“You don’t think you’ve given me enough?” Her voice was as hushed as the snow around them, and he was aware that only a small copse of trees stood between them and the others. The very  _ nosy _ others. “You’ve given me  _ time _ , and all your patience, and… and… and a way of living that I’d forgotten about. Alistair.” Her lilt danced over his name, and as much as he adored hearing her say it, what she was saying—no matter how obliquely—was sinking into his head and made his throat tight and his heart ache in his chest. “Alistair, I can start to  _ let go _ because of you. That’s a gift to me.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. So he didn’t say anything. Instead, he took her face in his hands and gave her enough time to pull away. When she didn’t, he curled forward and she met him halfway to the kiss.

* * *

_ Oh _ .

Her mouth opened underneath his, and he responded in kind. Her heart beat as if it were a wild animal throwing itself against the bars of a cage. His fingertips were feather-light on her cheeks, and he tasted like the hard-tack and cured meat they’d eaten for lunch. Her eyes fluttered shut, and a coil tension wound and unwound in her belly.

_Oh_ _Maker_.

His tongue quested tentatively past her lips, and she sucked in a hard breath. He made to break away, but she rose up on tip-toes and pressed herself against him with a clink of their armor. Warmth suffused her as he flared across all her senses and his bare fingers traced ever so gently down the line of her ears.

_ Oh no—  _

Her tongue met his awkwardly, blind and fumbling, but unwilling to stop for the want that pulsed through her whole body. He breathed her in, and she belatedly remembered to inhale, too, the icy air tickling her nose. Her lips and what felt like half her face were wet from his mouth, and the cold air threatened to freeze it across her skin.

_ —I can’t— _

His nose abruptly bumped against hers as he shifted his head, and the unexpected jolt broke the spell that threatened to make her squirm in a new and not unpleasant way. They both panted like they’d run five miles, puffs of steam drifting into the dark and cloudy sky. Her arms shook, and her shoulders crawled up to meet her ears. 

“Cait? Cait, are you alright? Oh, your hands.” Her eyes fixed on the safe point of his breastplate, and she started as he gently uncurled her fists. Half moon marks lingered on her palms, paler for having clenched tight for however long they’d kissed. 

Wiggling her fingers, she wasn’t sure how to answer the question. Instead, she said the first thing that popped into her head: “I didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

“Huh, here I thought  _ I _ was the awkward one.” He smiled crookedly as he regarded her down his long, freckled nose. One dark eyebrow twitched upwards, and her jaw jutted out stubbornly. 

“You are.”

“Then we’re both awkward. Nope, too late, can’t take it back.”

“Fine, we’re both awkward. Happy?” She huffed, but didn’t pull away. How long had they been kissing? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Time had gone fuzzy for the duration, and she risked a glance out the corner of her eye through the trees. Everyone else was where she remembered them, methodically eating a cold lunch before they set out again.

“Yes, I do believe I am. You didn’t answer my question, though. Are you alright?”

“I think so.”

“Did… did I? I mean, was it… nice? I thought it was.”

“It was! Nice, I mean. A bit… wet. But… nice.”

_ Nice _ was a small word for the torrent of unfamiliar sensations and feelings that had swept through her like a spring river in flood. That pulsed in her still, between her legs and her breasts. His flushed face and ears betrayed his own state, but that crooked smile threatened to become a permanent fixture.

“We…” She licked her lips. “We could try that again.”

“Later?”

She shook her head, and his hazel eyes went wide. Her face burned in the winter air, but she gingerly let her fingers sink into his ruddy hair. This time she didn’t mind the loss of control quite so much. Not when she had him to hold on to.

* * *

Hands behind his head, Alistair stretched out under his blankets in his tent and tried to sleep. It wasn’t going well. How could he sleep? Kissing her had been… Maker it had taken everything he had not to crush her to him, to hold her as close as their armor would allow. But then he had touched her ears and she’d shivered, and pressed herself close.

So very, very close.

Fresh water and lilac and warm skin and her mouth—

He brought his thoughts up short, veering away from ideas that would really keep him awake. Awake and aching all through the night. His body didn’t know any better, but he did. Breathing out slowly, he sifted through his thoughts for something else to ponder.

Last year’s Feastday had been his last at the monastery. Duncan had arrived a month later and conscripted him right out from the Revered Mother’s nose, much to his chortling delight. There had been praying and a modest feast and then more praying. In Redcliffe, he’d eaten with the servants, though when he’d been very small Eamon had given him toys hidden in the standard gift of a new tunic. Those Feastdays had been bright and whirling and warm but lonely.

Today had been cold and tiring. No special dinner at all, just snow and grey skies. No gifts except  _ her _ , her trust and courage. And in return, he was good enough for her. It was still hard to fathom, but it made him feel like his heart was too big for his chest, and  _ proud _ . Proud of himself, which was entirely unfamiliar, but when she looked at him with a breath-stealing mix of fondness and approval, he could almost believe it.

It was the best Feastday he could remember in his whole life.

But next year, he promised himself, he’d get her something. Something grand, as grand as she made him feel.


End file.
